Lovers Not Friends. Helen Brooks

with just the right touch of embarrassed warmth in it to appeal to an old woman’s motherly instincts. ‘It is Amy, Mrs … Cox?’ Blade moved out of the shadows and walked a few steps into the shaft of light from the open front door. ‘I walked Amy home from the restaurant, Mrs Cox. We were just saying good-night.’

      ‘Is that right?’ Mrs Cox’s normally slow Yorkshire drawl was tight with suspicion. ‘Where is she, then?’

      ‘Here, Mrs Cox.’ Amy moved out of the shadows as she pretended to tidy her hair, her clothing now in place.

      ‘You know him?’ The plump little woman gestured towards Blade’s large masculine figure that dwarfed her by a good foot, looking for all the world like a fat little ruffled hen prepared to face an intruder that had threatened one of her chicks.

      ‘He’s an old friend, Mrs Cox.’ Amy’s cheeks were burning so fiercely they hurt and she was careful to stand just out of the light. ‘Just popped down from London.’

      ‘Now that isn’t quite right, Mrs Cox.’ Blade’s voice was infinitely pleasant and warm and the expression he had stitched on to his face made Amy want to hit him, hard. It was one of innocent candour and honest guilelessness, his eyes wide with ingenuous frankness and a desire to please. Amy had never trusted him less. ‘In actual fact I am Amy’s husband, albeit estranged. We separated three months ago,’ he added with just enough unspoken regret to make it clear who had left whom.

      ‘I see. Well, that’s none of my business,’ Mrs Cox said stiffly, but even from her place in the shadows Amy could see that the little woman’s face had mellowed and her bright button eyes were a good deal warmer as they held Blade’s dark glance. He’s done it again, Amy thought with equal amazement and resentment. Melted all opposition with just two well chosen sentences and a good deal of old traditional charm. Mrs Cox wasn’t really going to fall for this line of artless simplicity, was she? It appeared she was. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come in and have a cup of tea before you leave?’ the little Yorkshirewoman continued quietly. ‘I’ve just made a pot.’

      ‘That’s really very kind of you.’ As he followed Mrs Cox into the house he turned once at the threshold, allowing Amy to precede him into the hall, and as she glanced at his face it was as hard as iron.

      What was all this about? Amy thought helplessly. He had never willingly drunk tea in his life, preferring strong black coffee, and she knew him well enough to know that he never did anything on impulse. But of course … As she sat down by the heavily banked coal fire in the small sitting-room and listened to Blade charm Mrs Cox out of the trees, the reality of what he was about came to her in a blinding flash. This was her bolthole, her refuge, and he wanted to destroy it for her. He had spoken of punishment, retribution, hadn’t he? He was going to let Mrs Cox, and everyone else who had befriended her in the small village, know that she had left him for another man after a few months of marriage. This was a small community and a highly moral one with certain codes and rules that were adhered to as strictly now as at the beginning of the century. She would still be treated politely, with the well-mannered courtesy that was an integral part of village life here, but Blade would have stamped her as ‘that’ type of woman, on a par with her predecessor at the restaurant who had run off with her lover and left a desolate husband and children. And in a few days, maybe one or two, he would leave. Fait accompli!

      It came to her, as she sat there in the dim warm light that reflected the glowing fire’s flickering shadows on the old, highly polished furniture, that all this wasn’t going to be as straightforward as she had imagined. And the thought terrified her because he mustn’t, he mustn’t, find out the truth. She would do anything, anything at all, to prevent that.

      She glanced at his hands as they rested on the old leather arms of the chair. Solid gold watch on one tanned wrist, the signet ring inset with a single large diamond in one corner that she had given him on their wedding day, all the trappings of fabulous wealth that had surrounded her from their first meeting.

      But all the opulence, the rich affluence, had been no protection against the long hand of fate. It had reached out through all Blade’s hard-won assets, the cleverly amassed fortune, and touched her with its icy fingers.

      That had been one of the things Sandra had snarled at her that day, she remembered with a painful thudding of her heart, as she pictured her sister’s twisted angry face in her mind.

      ‘You thought you had it all, didn’t you? A millionaire and a handsome one to boot.’ Sandra’s voice had been shaking with rage and bitterness. ‘But you’ve got nothing now, little sister, nothing at all, in the end you’re just as naked and cold as the rest of us. Your looks will mean nothing once the disease strikes. Look at me, have a good hard look. This is you in a few years’ time. And he won’t be able to do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. All the money in the world can’t. I know, I’ve asked.’

      Sandra’s tormented face had glared at her with raw frustration in every pore. ‘He thought he was getting a beautiful little doll to show off to all his jet-setting friends and instead you are going to be a millstone round his neck! That’s really very funny when you think about it. Can you see the joke, Amy? Can you?’

      ‘You’re sick in more than body, Sandra,’ Amy had whispered faintly as she stared back into the maddened eyes. If it weren’t for the fact that her sister was a prisoner in the wheelchair, she was sure she would have leapt at her face like a small demented goblin. As it was, her hands were gripping the arms of the wheelchair in a claw motion that was infinitely chilling.

      ‘What do you know about it?’ Sandra had screamed bitterly. ‘You were always the favoured one, so pretty, so perfect. You’ve had a charmed life so far with everything going your way. Not like me!’

      ‘No, I haven’t.’ Amy had stood for a moment poised on the threshold of Sandra’s room in the old terraced house in the heart of Glasgow, her hand clutching the chilling medical report Sandra had given her a few minutes before, her sister having watched with fiendish satisfaction as she absorbed the portent of the doctor’s statement. ‘I had a miserable childhood with Aunt Alice and Uncle Julian. The only real happiness I’ve known has been since I’ve met Blade.’

      ‘Well, excuse me if I don’t shed any tears for you.’ There had been something truly malignant in Sandra’s dark eyes. ‘I hate you, Amy. I’ve always hated you. I shall die hating you.’

      She had left then, stunned and broken, still clutching the damning evidence in nerveless hands, and it had been a miracle she had ever reached London safely the way she had been feeling. She couldn’t remember the journey at all.

      She had stumbled into the beautiful city garden, her face white and stiff and her whole body shaking, and sat for hours as her tired mind screamed back and forth as she tried to come to terms with what she had read. In a few years she was going to die.

      She shook her head blindly. Slowly, very slowly, Sandra had emphasised. Day by day, week by week, month by month, her strength would ebb and her muscles wither as her body gave up the fight to go on. She was going to die. She had ripped the report into tiny tiny pieces but had found each word was imprinted on the pages of her mind.

      Blade’s deep voice suddenly cut into her thoughts as he replied to something Mrs Cox had said, and she came back to the present with a little jerk of her body, amazed to find herself in the small room with its old heavy furniture and glowing fire.

      Yes. She would do anything, anything, to keep the truth from him even if it meant he would leave this place hating the very sound of her name.